by Prix D Banzon

Davao City (25 October) -- The ICT players of the Philippines are working at least for a five percent share of the US$13 billion market of the industry worldwide.

Oscar Sanez, chief executive officer of the Business Process Outsourcing Association of the Philippines (BPOA) in his presentation during the 6th Mindanao ICT Congress and 1st BIMP-EAGA ICT Congress held at NCCC Mall in Davao City.

But Sanez challenged Mindanao players to work double time as most of the business process outsourcing is concentrated in Manila and Cebu.

He said 90 percent of the BPOs are done at the National Capital Region and the Visayas.

But Mindanao he said can benefit a lot on this as the area is highly competitive in terms of labor cost.

The property cost here is also an advantage very much lower than Makati.

However he stressed that big effort must be put to talent development even as he said that there is a lot of leakage the time the child goes to school up to the level of finishing a course.

He said the suitability of the graduates to work immediately after graduation must be improved.

"There are graduates who are not ready for employment," he said.

The industry he said has currently employed some 250,000 workers and in three and a half years the sector would need one million, the figure includes reserve for attrition.